>> they had these meetings on saturdays every week or so and they come up with this plan, and the plan is basically to do a

short term deal on the deficit because democrats hadn't passed a budget previous fall and it was lingering so they would need to pass, reach a short-term deal with republicans purchase the 2011 budget. and then after that they were hoping that would create momentum for a much bigger deal for cutting the deficit by trillions of dollars over 10 years. and so they start to go down that path, and they do this deficit deal basically by just accommodating republicans. republicans are demanding basically $100 billion in cuts from obama's proposal, a lot of money for budget for a given year. and the obama folks basically give them three quarters of that. so right off this engagement, you know, liberals -- so they do

that and then they begin to embark on this much longer, much harder negotiations over the long-term deficit. $4 trillion, obama wants 4 trillion over four years. republicans are calling for even more over 10 years. depending on how you score their proposal. and what's really interesting here is what starts to happen kind of internally behind the scenes. and again, i think this is kind of the key moment to see how, how seriously they took the idea of this bipartisanship of engaging with the other side. honestly, trying to hammer home some sort of deal, and that they were absolutely not being kind of cynical, trying to draw the republicans in and then ultimately sort of get the political upper hand. to key data points here that i write about in the book. one is, the white house had

interest we have actually concocted this pretty elaborate public relations offensive against the republicans. the political people thought that the republicans were very vulnerable because their budget plan targeted medicare for hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts, which in medicare as we know it as the talking point goes by turning into kind of a voucher system. so they thought that the local people in the white house thought the republicans were very, very vulnerable and they start to put together this plan to attack them. they have all sorts of different elements to the plan to basically they're just going to relentlessly hit them for wanting to kill medicare and give tax cuts to millionaires. and one element of this plan is actually austin goolsbee was the council of economics adviser had been doing these, they call them whiteboards and they're sort of video presentations that got a

lot of attention when he would use this whiteboard and kind of, sort of funny but education away to lay out the problem with the other side. and they had a handful of these goolsbee whiteboard presentations ready to go and unleash on the republicans. what happens is after one or two meetings when obama since his negotiators to meet with republicans but didn't talk about how to do this, the negation is come back and they say, we're very encouraged by the progress we're making with these guys. we think we can do a deal, and they plead with the political operatives to hold your fire, keep your powder dry, go on the attack you're going to totally torpedo the deal we think we can do. and so the guys in the room are actually negotiating with republicans, really call off the attack and obama thinks you're right, if we can do a deal we should try to do it.

we should not try to lacerate them in public. so that's the first thing. the second thing that was really interesting is the view of the white house negotiators toured the republicans. in public i think the republican negotiators who were eric cantor who is the number two figure in the house, and jon kyl, who was the number two figure in the senate, both of these guys are sort of reviled by democrats. and liberals in particular. they are just as the kind of neanderthal republicans who want to just slashed government at every opportunity. but what's interesting is behind closed doors, the obama negotiator who were joe biden, tim geithner, the treasury secretary, jack lew who was the budget director, and gene sperling, who was the top economic adviser, behind closed doors they think cancer is very reasonable.

they belie his repetition and public image as an end of all. they think is very pragmatic, very well-informed. and just a guy that they feel like they can do business with. what's interesting here is, this is a moment where i think, just as an aside, the experience of a lot of these guys, geithner, sperling, lou, even joe biden was innocent, expect of these guys in the '90s ends up being a little misleading here. because what happened in the '90s is a lot of these guys were in the room negotiating with republicans over a budget deal, very similar circumstances in a lot of ways. and so they kind of took from that experience these guys may see a lot of crazy stuff in the public but once you get them in the room you can act to do business because that's what happened in the '90s. and they compared eric cantor to

someone like john kasich, but back then was a republican lieutenant of newt gingrich. they explicitly compared cantor to kasich as a guy who would belt out -- say a lot of crazy stuff in the public but when she got in behind closed doors he would be real reasonable. the problem, one, these guys may have been personally reasonable, but the republican caucus in the house of representatives was much more conservative than it was in the mid '90s. it was just a completely different ideological, not completely, but different ideological orientation. so the analogy i've said was a correct even though that was the analogy that they approached. the second was economy was much weaker of time. so even in theory, you could spend two or three years negotiating over the deficit and eventually strike a deal, the economy didn't have that kind of time. we were very close to a second

recession. the unemployment rate was above 9%. the economy could have benefited from additional support. all that is to say that there were a lot of good reasons to take a harder, more partisan line with these guys but obama's negotiators came back with the evidence they had from the first couple of meetings that the republicans really pleaded with the president to be given a chance to strike a deal, and he ascended. so again, not the kind of thing, conversation you would imagine going on behind closed doors if this were all part of a kind of cynical managed to plan. so what ends up happening? well, what happens is the republicans are just absolutely intransigent. they refused -- obama side is prepared to give a lot of concessions. trillions of dollars in cuts, hundreds of billions in cuts to social security programs

considered sacred by democrats but republicans absolutely resist tax increases. and the white house understands that you can't do the deal involving only cuts. so finally getting late in these negotiations, and basically at every opportune to republicans have said no, we're not going to raise taxes. and jon kyl, the number two guy in the senate turns to a couple of obama's negotiators and says, jenny, do you mean to tell me there's a bunch of cuts you guys think are good policy but you guys will do them unless we raise taxes? and gene sperling and jack lew say, that's exactly right, yeah, we cannot do them unless you meet us halfway. things basically break up after that. what goes on for the next month, month and a half, a series of efforts to kind of reconstituted deal, you know, instead of this negotiation with obama's economic team and eric cantor

and jon kyl, obama himself weighs in and negotiate directly with john boehner. but really by this point it's obvious that republicans are just not going to do the deal. what's really interesting though i think is, it is really sort of underscores, two things actually that really underscore the point that they did not intend this as a way to make republicans look bad. they intended it as a way to get a big deficit deal done. the first thing is you are a series of moments along the way where, and i described one of them but there are many more, where the republicans basically say or strongly intimate that they cannot raise taxes. bill absently not go along with tax increases. at every moment is obama himself or some of his top aides always trying to sort of rush back and put negotiations back together, long after the point where they established that they are reasonable people and

negotiating in good faith and its the republicans who absolutely refuse to go along. so that's one thing. i think that's highly indicative of what's going on here. the second thing that's really interesting is, when this finally collapsed in late july of 2011, and it becomes obvious that they're not going to get his big deficit graham barr and they're hoping to get, the people inside the white house regarded themselves as having failed. they thought it was an absolute failure. even though at this point, what's interesting is the public opinions are becoming their way. what happens, really over the course of july is the public starts to blame republicans for being really stubborn and reckless. the same time it is today sheesh and over raising the debt ceiling which if not been raised in return of the financial crisis. so public opinion is really sort of moving their way, which had to drive us up as a master plan

would've been the exact result that you wanted, but they regard themselves as having failed. they wanted a deal and they tried repeatedly to get a deal. and having not gotten it, they were really, really disappointed and disillusioned. so what happens is really interesting. the lesson that obama takes away from this is that basically, i've been a little naïve, the previous two and a half years. and where you see this is in august 2011, so within days of this negotiation breaking dow

to extend the payroll tax that was about to expire at the end

of the year. the old obama would have and, in fact, did try to kind of go in the room behind closed doors with republicans and talk to them. this obama was done with it. he basically went around the country and accuse these guys and wanted to raise taxes on working people. that was quite effective. the payroll tax cut got extended for us for two months and then for the full year. republicans basically folded on everything. and so i think you saw a real education happening last summer home in aiding with this one partisan, more populous cast, his presidency. and the real question i sort of leave sort of end on is, you know, is this the case of obama having finally learned his lesson, the bipartisan engagement sort of a fools errand. if you want to get something done, ultimate you got to to take the case to the people and put pressure on your opponents from the outside. or is this a case of obama and

the white house, after having been burned by that experience, realize going into an election year, they can't keep doing this. but should they win reelection and we get, unicom into november and december and facing those challenges of budget cuts at the beginning, will be reversed a form and try to do sort of a bipartisan behind the scenes good-faith engagement? that's an open question. i have some thoughts about it, but that's a question that against voters are going to have to wrestle with when we go to the polling booths this fall. at the bottom line to me is, this is not, strikes me as a person or an administration that was so sophisticated and plotting each move of the past three years that it set up this kind of crescendo in the last six months. it strikes me as an administration that was very earnestly committed to a way of

doing business in washington, that way of doing business proving ineffective and sort of demoralizing. and then learning the lessons of that, at least for the moment, and enacting them. so that's the thought i will leave you with, but i'm happy to talk more about this, and really any sort of economic or political economic decision or episode of the last three years. [applause] >> thank you very much for joining us here at ann arbor. one thought that i had, unicom

in the course of your presentation, i don't have any strong reason to disagree with your assessment that this may have been the wrong strategy, strategy of bipartisanship may have been the wrong strategy in hindsight, but once i did like to pressure on is how much should the obama administration have known in advance that this would've been the wrong strategy? because you know, i think one needs to make a distinction between strategies, looking forward even if one may not come even if optimal strategies looking forward may turn out to have been the wrong strategy looking backwards in hindsight. because, for example, in general one could always have unexpected events emerge that make the originally optimal strategy the wrong strategy, and of course the most obvious thing here is the emergence of the tea party

movement and the dramatic changes in congress that happened with midterm elections. so wondering if you could speak about that. i think the critique seems more much stronger that you are making if you can point to things that the obama administration should have seen an advance that would've indicated this is the wrong strategy looking for as opposed to just hang in hindsight it was the wrong strategy. >> yeah, it's a good question. i actually don't begrudge obama and the white house, their bipartisanship, in the first year, even two years of the administration. obama, as i said, was deeply committed personally. and beyond that, had campaigned, sir changing the tone in washington, had campaigned on setting aside the partisan divisions of the past. and so i think he would have been foolish to have not make a

good-faith effort to live up to that at the outset. so i think, you know, while watching, say, the stingers debate or even the health care debate unfold was often maddening. i think it was forgivable and maybe even necessary at the time. my quibble really is with 2011. i think by the beginning of 2011 there were already a number of data points that this strategy was unlikely to work. at least -- iv is a it ended up working somewhat politically. because of the experience of the schemes come because of the expense of health care, you know, there's other piece of legislation we haven't touched on, one of which was dodd-frank financial reform that was also incredibly partisan vote.

what's interesting about dodd-frank is, unicom health care is always tough because it's big, sort of symbolic reasons, right? even the actual plant itself is something the heritage foundation cooked up in the '90s, unicom health care is this day, the idea of a government health care plan, that into this sort of conservatism. i can see that being very controversial on its face, but, you know, reforming wall street, there was an enormous bipartisan sentiment that this should happen. the tea party railed against the bailouts of the megabanks, every bit as intense as liberals did. so there definitely was an opportunity there for bipartisan cooperation, and yet this proved to be an incredibly partisan vote that really went down to the wire and required all sorts of arm twisting. so i think by the time you get

to the fall of 2010 it's really hard to see how earnest engagement with these guys is going to produce substantive agreement. and you know, i think these forces are already brewing in 2009-2010, but the fact that 60, unicom house freshmen showed their congressional seats to the tea party suggests that it's only going to miss further in that direction. and what's interesting is, i read about this in the book, and we kind of indicated in my quick summary of it, but if nothing else, what should have been the final tipoff is this a shorter, earlier negotiation and 2011 over the 2011 budget. because that's the moment where the obama folks were actually willing to do cuts, significant

cuts, and each time they propose something, and they thought that boehner had agreed to it, he would go back to the tea partiers and they would say no, not good enough. either come back and he would demand even more cuts. and this happened, they were like three or four of these even before that to the much bigger negotiations. so certainly over the course of 2009-2010, but if nothing else, 2011 because it was this kind of microcosm of larger negotiation is going to come. and what sort of stunning is the white house had the exact opposite read on the negotiati negotiation, plus was saying things like go, it's great, you know, we did this deal, we build trust between obama and boehner. we show they can do business. meanwhile, the tea partiers, a sort of read what they were saying, were saying we own this

town. this liberal president and we just forced to cut 70, $80 billion from his budget. they were pumping their chests. so i really think, unicom if you set aside all the other data points, that was one that was sort of loud and clear. in fact, it was the subject of a lot of debate internally within the administration. there were people within the administration who think this is crazy. we should fight them now because this is only going to embolden them. and it turned out to be right. >> thanks are coming. i have to ghana disagree with you a little bit. i think an awful lot was pretty suspicious around april and may of 2009, and by the time june or july came around, the first year, i think is pretty obvious that obama was going to be a weak president, at least with respect to congress.

now, i'm a fairly moderate to conservative urban democrat, and it was obvious to me by june or july, in fact i started calling him all day in the around august. now what is it, ironically people more to the left of the democratic party have had such a hard time preceding the weakness, going into negotiation, compromise ahead of time, all of the good stuff? as far as like other option, not fighting, simply making a couple public statements before? i happen to support public options. so i mean, the weakness from the very beginning. why didn't more of the democratic party see that? >> yeah, so i, look, my view of 2009 is it was maddening to watch them and you're right that the signs were there. but i think it was forgivable.

unicom he campaigned on the stuff he believed in and it was worth letting it play out for a year. you know, what's interesting, first of all, i think that a lot of people on the left were pretty frustrated. you know, i think now there may be a little resistance and people are sort of falling in line, unicom as mitt romney attacks obama and republicans attack, but there was a lot of, a lot of pandering on the left at the time, particularly over the public option. the thing about obama that drives a lot of this just be on the core belief if bipartisanship is obama himself and his top political advisors like david axelrod, david plouffe, had a theory about politics and government, and the three was you don't mix the two. so there's a political season and you go out and you make your

case and you're very forceful, and then there's a governing season. and in the governing season you set the gain society and you kind of do business in a very above board way without going and saying nasty stuff about your opponents behind their backs. i think that was completely wrong, and i think the last six to eight months have shown that to be wrong. but where that comes from is interesting but it comes from the way they very self-consciously define itself in opposition to the clintons. they believe that bill clinton was the inventor of the permanent campaign. campaign never ended. and was always at the campaign, always giving some speeches, always attacking republicans. and obama, above all, they wanted to be the anti-clintons. and the problem with that is it work. it was pretty good. clinton obviously had his

glasses and his failings in dealing with congress, but ultimately it showed, unicom if you go out and kind of geeky guys at the bit you to soften them up and you have more leverage in negotiations. i think that's where it came from. i agree with you, i think it was wrongheaded. to me the question is, audie finally over that hang of? as i say, i think that payroll tax episode showed if he did go out and soften these guys up, you will do a lot more of what you want. but some of these, these hangups are so deeply seated and deeply rooted that you wonder if they won't just revert to form after the election. >> thanks. i'm curious to get your opinion on what you think president obama rejected the simpson-bowles commission, or their recommendations? because that would seem to fit your narrative of him trying to

achieve a grand bargain with bipartisan support. and it's kind of been speculated that day, either when he would have embraced it, no, it would've killed any chance of republican support, or b, that you know, it cuts to social security and other entitlements would've just been a no go for many democrats pick some curious to get your opinion on that because that one decision he made in 2011 seems to kind of not fall in line with the rest of your narrative. >> it's a great question. i agree that it doesn't fit the narrative. you're absolutely right that, you know, as i said to violate 2011 obama is saying don't give me a prepackaged legislative compromise designed to win over republican support. that's exactly what bowles-simpson was designed to be. so i agree, it is a little out of character. i think that was basically a reflection of the fact that by

2011 they were feeling a lot of pressure. and they were beginning to be concerned about that pressure, and the pressure build particularly with medicare, social security. and their anxiety, which i think was the correct anxiety was, if you embrace bowles-simpson, and they said this, too, and i happen to agree, if you embrace bowles-simpson, which is where you want to end up, it immediately becomes not where you will end up but it becomes your opening pit. and you end up several hits to the right of it. if you recall paul ryan, who gave the republican opening, was often -- off in crazy land, trillions of dollars in tax cuts and cutting discretionary spending at to start an immediate post-world war ii level. so they figured, like, you have this guy, paul ryan to his way

out there, and if we embrace bowles-simpson which is one want to end up, we'll end up somewhere in the middle and that's going to be a communal, a bad place to be subsequently because we don't feel like we should go anywhere further to the right and bowles-simpson, and b, we are going to get killed politically. i agree, even so, that analysis which i think was a little out of character for them, but i think, you know, one of the things that happen in 2010 after the midterm elections is democrats and liberals are irate over the bush tax cuts, which they extend for another two years. and they think that that was like a complete capitulation. so you have this early 2011, which is democrats are already deeply suspicious and they are worried about them selling, you know, the party out to republicans. so even though they decide to embark on this deficit reduction path, they are very, very conscious of their left wing. the other thing that is

interesting is when obama does make a proposal, which is this $4 trillion deficit reduction package over 12 years, he announces it at a speech at george washington university in april, they aren't so worried about the reaction on the left that they really amp up the language of the speech, and he comes out kind of very critical of paul ryan and talks about how he is a dark vision for america, and so, all of that was because they were worried about this revolt on their left. ..

>> i grew up in michigan, i grew up in the midwest, i've lived here all my life. for my part midwest, i think, you know, i'm personally just tired of this left/right. people are paid a lot of money to get something done in washington. and i think the country wants to see that happen. i wanted to know why did, um, personally michigan has been hit very hard economically, but why did obama focus on health care instead of the economy? as the first choice? >> um, it's a great question. this is a major theme of my book. [laughter] so my view of obama is, um, he's got a bit of a messianic streak, and the thing -- and this, again, is partly, you know, him defining himself in opposition to bill clinton. but obama felt like someone like

clinton played a lot of small ball in his presidency. he, um, sacrificed kind of the opportunity to fix generational problems, to really score a lot of small points against republicans. and so he wanted to commit to doing the opposite. you know, there's actually a very -- i mention this interview in my book, but he gives this interview during the primaries in 2008 where he talks about how, you know, the really last transformational president we have is ronald reagan, and the clintons get just completely irate about this, and they started accusing him of sort of being a closet reagan supporter. what he meant was, you know, this guy thought big thoughts and really wanted to change the trajectory of the country. and obama himself very much, obama very much saw himself in the same way. it was only this pun everybodying -- punishing two-year marathon of running for president it's only worth it if

you were going to do something that made a mark on the country, and the things at the top of the list were health care and climate change, dealing with climate change. so what happens in september of 2008 is, um, we have this financial crisis like a meteor that hits the country and the campaign, and his political advisers are starting to become very worried, you know? you know, even before that they felt like health care was a liability politically. but certainly now after this financial crisis, they're very worried. and they sort of come to him and saw say, you know, we now have this new reality, what are we going to do about it? and he's absolutely unwilling to let go of health care. so he personally sort of constructs this rationale for keeping going with it which is, well, you know, we can't really solve the problem, can't really get the economy back on a kind of foundation unless we deal with these longer-term problems like health care. and it's, you know, on one level

sort of true, but on another level sort of a bait and switch. and the add viers -- advisers are a little bit skeptical, but he's so adamant about this they go with it. and what happens during the transition, and this is really the preamble to the book, i write about it at the beginning, is that obama's still so commit today this stuff that he decides what he's going to have to do is hire a bunch of people who are really expert in dealing with the economy and particularly financial crises and economic crises. that way -- and dell gate a lot of -- delegate a lot of responsibility and authority to them. that way he'll have the bandwidth to deal with things like health care and cap and trade. and that's how you end up with this team of clintonites, the clinton economic team part two. i mean, look, it was a serious crisis, and you want experienced people. but there was this idea that you would need a group of people you

could trust to delegate a lot of responsibility to so you could deal with these other things, and that's sort of where they come from. and this really goes on, you know, this debate over health care goes on up until kind of september of 2009 where, um, people are still pleading with obama to let it go, scale it back. rahm emanuel had this idea that you would do health care, and and then, you know, you'd do it by july, and then after that you'd immediately turn back to the economy and start pitching, you know, kind of more jobs proposals. and that, obviously, got completely cast aside because health care dragged on for so long. in the book i tell a story about a senator who comes to see obama in the oval office and the is just pleading with him, you know, please. i know you ran on health care, but, you know, had i been elected at a time of unprecedented economic hardship, i would really want people to know that what i did with my

first year was worry about jobs. and obama said, you know, this is why i ran, you know? this is what mattered to me. so he believed in it deeply, um, on one level i don't begrudge him for believing in it deeply, but i do think it ended up being an enormous political liability. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. i have a more general political question. and that's about polarization or the apart polarization this our political -- apparent polarization in our political client that i think we as lay people see around us. and i don't think it's unique at all to the situation in the united states. certainly apparent in quite a few western european countries as well. and whether that polarization somehow calls for a different style of governance at the level of the presidency that is more effective than the more

conventional style that i think you ascribe to of bipartisanship, behind closed doors making deals, etc. and i'm thinking of this in the context of people like burr lieu sconeny in italy and maybe a tony blair in england and to some degree sarkozy in france. they've all adopted sort of a different style of governance, and whether, you know, the failings, if you will, the sort of knew yea today that you describe to obama ought to be understood in that kind of context? >> um, yeah. i mean, i certainly do think that, you know, we're in an era, you know, a more polarized era. i think the political scientists would tell you that we used to have kind of ideological coalitions within political parties, but now the parties have sorted themselves out along ideological lines x those coalitions had been kind of moderating forces, and we've gotten rid of those moderating forces, so now the two sides can

kind of just flex their ideological muscles and go at it. i buy that. i think we are in a more polarized age, and i certainly believe that that has implications for the way a president governs. i mean, i think, um, you know, i think what's interesting, there was a piece by, you know, a fellow sort of economics writer in the new yorker a week or two ago about whether presidential communication matters, whether it moves public opinion or influences politicians in congress. and the upshot was, no, not really. in fact, it can even backfire because once a president embraces something, the other side is almost less likely to support it than they were before. but i actually think that, um, that the implications are a little more subtle, and one of the things i think you find is

that because we're in this age of polarization, the other side is always looking for opportunities to kind of kneecap the party in power. and that's kind of their first priority. and so what ends up happening, i think, is the other side makes, you know, in this case republicans, they place a lot of bets which is there are maybe things that they support in principle, but if they support them as a practical matter, they will get no credit if it works, right? because the ruling party will get credit. and they will share in the blame if it fails because the ruling party will say, well, these guys supported it too. and i think that dynamic actually makes communication more important because, um, it basically becomes incumbent upon the ruling party to say these guys, you know, are blocking the things that actually may be helpful and may be popular. and i'll just give you a very

concrete example of that which is, you know, obama passes this big stimulus in february 2009, and republicans are almost entirely unified existence it. against it. and for the next two years the white house is tearing its hair out trying to understand how it can get more stimulus. congress turned out to be weak, and the white house wants more stimulus, but republicans are just reflexively opposing it. the problem there is if you don't, um, if you don't go and call them out on this, you give them the best of all worlds, right? you, a, let them stop it and, b, um, let them not appear as though they're stopping it, right in so that's the best outcome from there. they get to stop it, and they're not the bad guys, right? so i think it becomes really important be, actually, to use the bully pulpit of the white house to make them choose. they can either stop it and be the bad guys, or they can not be

bad guys and not stop it, but you can't let them have it both ways. and i think that's sort of the reality of governing in this really polarized age. you can't give the other guys a free lunch, and i think obama, you know, for a good two and a half years was doing that. the republicans were able to stop it, thereby making, you know, leaving the economy incredibly weak. except they weren't paying the price for stopping it because no one really knew it was them. the public was blaming the white house. so i think that's, you know, one of the most obvious implications of the kind of highly-polarized age. >> thank you for your work. um, while i commend you for your emphasis on the theme of bipartisanship and how well entrenched it was, i think it was too long, and i don't have a well-formulated question, but i do have a comment.

there are other significant variables as well. um, playing into obama's naivete. and one is his temperament, of course. another one is his lack of experience. um, i also think he started running for president in the be second year that he was a senator. he did not learn adequately, to my point of view, the methodology of being a senator for six years. he didn't have a network of people he could trust, and when he got into the white house, he did not develop a network of people. instead, despite this we're not clinton idea, he inherits the clinton team because he doesn't have a number of democrats who he believes in, he knows well, he's worked with, and he's developed some trust. so not only does he not have a

network entering, but he doesn't develop that network as well. and i think the team of clinton, people that he inherits, are kind of a throwback to that clinton era in the '90s of group think. and that is what obama gets on a daily basis. and i think that's also what daley and some of the other points concluded. and i don't think valerie jarrett necessarily being the personal right-hand adviser to both michelle and barack is necessarily a good thing, and i'd like your comments, please. >> yeah. i think that's right. i mean, i think that, um, obama by disposition is a bit of a loner. not a glad-hander, not the kind of guy that just derives kind of satisfaction from getting on the phone and calling 20 people in an afternoon just to take the temperature, you know, as clinton sort of famously did. i think that's right. obama had kind of a natural, you know, was going to be kind of

naturally isolated anyway, and not having that sort of network just affirmed that, you know, reinforced that isolation. so i do think that was, um, i do think that was a problem. um, you know, the other thing i think that was, your point about inexperience, um, i think is, you know, is helpful. i mean, i think, um, you know, one of the problems i think you find with presidents, and i think we definitely saw it with obama, is, um, they don't know, um, you know, often you get presented these, you know, these memos or these kind of pieces of advice that kind of work their way up through the white house apparatus or through the government apparatus and, you know, they come with, like, choice a, choice b and choice c and, obviously a million things that are left out of that, right? you know, there's a million permutations that you could choose besides ab and c. and i think if you're sort of

new to the whole exercise, you're not used to kind of prodding and demanding more than choice a, b and c. i mean, i think obama had a very impressive analytical mind, you know, he was very good at seeing where logical premises fell apart and the reason he wasn't so solid. but i think he was less good at kind of understanding the flow of information, what was getting to him, what wasn't getting to him, the ways in which, you know, information could be lost before he ever saw it, the ways in which aides could be blinded by their own previous experience, by their own biases. and i think it did take a while for him to sort of get beyond that. and i think you're right, you know? that's the kind of thing you probably hope that a president instant -- isn't learning on the job in his first year or two of the presidency. and i'm not sure whether it gets, whether it's better if you

serve as a governor or some kind of corporate executive, but i think you're right. the part of the problem not managing an enormous organization before this was, um, you know, just information flow. and i think, um, if you don't have that, you know, you don't have the experience that you need to kind of get the right information, and you're already a bit of a loner by disposition, and you don't have this network of individuals that you trust, um, who have some experience doing it, then i think you can be in for a real rough ride. and i think that does explain part of it, yeah. >> thank you. your subtitle indicates that the obama administration fumbled the recovery, and you've argued that in large part is because the administration had misplaced faith in bipartisanship, especially prior to the midterm elections. my question is, if you could, please, explain to us a few of the policies that ought to have

been adopted in, especially in 2011, that would have been possible had he taken this more assertive approach that you now indicate that he's following but that were sacrificed at this altar of bipartisanship? >> yeah, great question. for me the counterfactual is -- the two parties are where you see it most historically. the first is the original stimulus. you know, again, i don't begrudge them for being bipartisan, but i think they could have played it a little savvier. i think had they proposed something much larger, $1.2 trillion rather than starting at $775 billion which is where they did, that basically the handful of moderates who are going to the decisive votes in the senate, olympia snowe, susan collins, arlen specter, they were always going to cut $250 billion off of it, so you might as well have started high and bargained down to a trillion dollars rather than starting at

$775 billion and ending up there or, in fact, ending up lower because of a variety of technical reasons, some of that just kind of seeped out. so i think the original stimulus was one place where they left some money on the table. the other place, though, i think is, um, and you kind of have to tell an entire counterfactual history of the administration, but i think they had a shot at another big stimulus, four or five hundred being dollars. basically, the package that obama finally proposes in this september of 2011, it was built around this payroll tax cut, an expansion of the payroll tax cut. that was almost half of it. i think had he proposed something like that in spring of 2010, he had a real good shot of passing that. 2010 they still had, democrats had 59 votes in the senate, so the senate math is a lot better. they controlled the house which means it would have passed the house.

and it was at this moment where, you know, throughout the second half of 2009 the economy's starting to improve, and there's a lot of optimism that the recovery is going to be quick and steep, and then we get into the first, you know, few months leading into the spring of 2010, and we start to regress again. and there starts to be a lot of anxiety because people kind of assume that we were out of this thing, and suddenly it was obvious that we were not. i think between public opinion turning, you know, starting to turn back toward anxiety and the math on capitol hill and the fact as we saw in recent months that something like a payroll tax cut which republicans have historically supported is very difficult to oppose politically when the president is out there making the case for it. so i think that was a moment where they had a real shot at something big that would have really reinforced the recovery. and for a variety of reasons,

partly because of bipartisanship, partly because there was internal dysfunction which i describe in the book, they just never even ghei themselves a -- gave themselves a chance to do it. so i think that was a real missed opportunity. >> my question is in many ways a follow-up to john's. it seems to me you're arguing that clinton's more combative way of doing things might have been more appropriate than obama's more cooperative way of doing things. but my look at the historical record suggests both of them at the end of the day wind up adopting sent risk policies. and -- centrist policies. and your entire way of thinking about this seems to be that in a counterfactual world, the democrats really would like to implement the policy that's substantially more expansionary than the republicans, and i don't see any evidence in postwar economic history that suggests that's true. >> that it's true that democrats would like to do that or --

>> i don't know what, you know, only god knows their hearts, but there's no evidence they actually behave differently than republicans. >> right. well, i guess i would separate, you know, kind of the normal, um, turning of the business cycle which, you know, i take your word for it in a moment where there's an enormous, you know, output gap and, um, you know, you spend $2 trillion and still, you know, still not be back at, you know, potential gdp as the economists call it. so i think, you know, i think that may be true, but i think that this was a moment where the case for stimulus was less ideological than it just was entirely pragmatic that we had this huge hole in the economy that needed to be filled. you'll remember that in december of 2008 a lot of republican economists were calling for an

enormous stimulus, you know, $500 million to a trillion dollars. mark zandi, who was mccain's campaign top economic adviser, one of them, called for 600 billion in one year, you know? which, you know, and obama was operating on this two-year timetable. so i think there was this, you know, there was this understanding that we were in a unique moment, and people saw it less as an opportunity to sort of, to kind of stake ideological ground and make a play for the seize of government over the long -- the size of government over the long term than just doing what was necessary to plug this enormous hole in the economy. >> yeah. the last speaker mentioned something about centrist policies. i'd like to question that, whether the policies that the current administration actually succeeded in getting through congress, whether they really were sent risk or whether they were to the right of center given the health care plan that came out of the aei, etc., etc.

i think that's a kind of revisionist history, actually. >> no, i agree. i think he's arguing that that's what you would expect because that's where the sort of democrats have been despite some of the rhetoric. no, i think if you go initiative by initiative, these were right-of-center policy bees. i mean, health care was, you know, this was the alternative that republicans and republican think tanks put out in the early '90s when clinton came out with his health care proposal. the individual mandate, the, you know, kind of subsidies for people to buy health insurance in the private market. clearly like a right-of-center policy up until about three years ago, you know? [laughter] dodd-frank, i mean, the financial reform, i spent a lot of time criticizing it in the book. i mean, this is a pretty modest regulatory reform effort, very

little as i, you know, conclude, very little that the banks and, you know, the big wall street institutions fought aggressively, very little of that made it into the final bill. and the little of it that did would kick to regulators who the banks wield enormous leverage over. so clearly, i mean, by any kind of objective, disinterested calculus, clearly, i think, a center-right, a center-right piece of legislation as well. i mean, even the stem husband, you know? -- stimulus, you know? you'll remember that obama came into the stimulus negotiation having already conceded that a good 40% of the stimulus should be tax cuts which, you know, a lot of keynesian economists on the right and the left -- obviously more on the left -- believe is pretty ineffective as a form of stimulus because it tends to be saved rather than spent, or a much higher proportion tends to be saved. so absolutely. i mean, i think, um, one of the

subthemes of my book is obama's like a pretty moderate, you know, even, moderate kind of center-right guy. i talk about, um, a meeting in, you know, the guy was a real deficit hawk among other things. i have this description of a meeting in november of 2009 where peter orszag who was sort of the voice for budget and deficit hawk erie in the administration gets in love with his plan for not extending, you know -- obama had always said he would extend the middle class bush tax cuts but allow the upper income cuts to expire and, orszag decides he likes this plan where they basically all expire because there's no other way to balance the budget over ten years if you're not going to do that. and, you know, obama even though this would be a huge political risk, i mean, he would reverse himself on tax cuts for the middle class which if there's a riskier thing to reverse

yourself on as a democratic president, i'm not sure what it is. but he was really intrigued by this idea. he thought, you know, it was hard to see how else you were going to balance the budget without doing this. so he was kind of an authentic enough deficit hawk that he was willing to entertain ideas that would expose him to enormous political risk to advance that goal. so, yeah, you know, i think he's, i think he's a pretty sent risk, even at -- centrist, even at times center-right guy. >> i think we have time for one further question if anyone would like to come forward. otherwise i think what we'll do is we'll thank noam very much for an enlightening talk. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org, or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> from 1971 to 1973, president

richard nixon secretly recorded his phone conversations and meetings. this weekend on c-span radio hear more of the nixon tapes. saturday at 6 p.m. eastern with conversations between the president and cia director richard helms and also fbi director j. edgar hoover. >> some people think that now that this quarter's active, i've got to make a statement about the freedom of the press and that we aren't trying to censor them and so forth. my inclination is not to say so -- >> i think you're right. >> i kind of think i should stay out. but what's your public relations view on it, edgar? i'd just like to know. >> you should remain absolutely silent about it. >> you would, huh? >> i would. >> in washington, d.c. listen at 90.1 fm. nationwide we're on xm channel 119 and streaming at c-span radio.org. >> here are the best selling nonfiction books according to

"the new york times." this list reflect sales as of may 17th. topping the list is robert caro's "passage of power," the fourth volume of his series, the years of lyndon johnson. mr. caro has had several appearances on booktv, and you can watch those programs online at booktv.org. second is gregalman's memoir, "my cross to bear." mr. allman co-wrote his memoir with alan light. third is anna quinlan's "lots of candles, plenty of cake." you can send your questions to miss quinlan to booktv@cspan.org. former u.s. secretary of state madeleine albright is fourth with her memoir, "prague winter." fifth is "the power of habit" by charles duhigg. scientific discoveries that lead explanations to forming good and bad habits.

sixth is "drift" by msnbc host rachel maddow. she analyzes what she calls america's history of creating war and argues that the executive branch of government is too powerful. then jonah lehrer's "imagine: how creativity works," is seventh. ms. maddow and mr. lehrer recently appeared on booktv to discuss their books. in "the president's club," time magazine's nancy gibbs and michael duffy examine how presidents from hoover to obama worked with and against each other during their terms in the white house. this is eighth. ninth is "killing lincoln" by bill o'reilly and martin dugard. then "manhunt" recounts the 10-year search for osama bin laden. this is tenth. go to nytimes.com and click on arts to find out more.